We Still Live Here

This week, I had the opportunity to watch a documentary called, We Still Live Here, Âs Nutayuneânby, which detailed the story of a Wampanoag woman and her mission to revitalize the Wampanoag language.

The film details the road that Jessie Littledoe took in an effort to bring the Wampanoag language out of the archive and back into the community. It reminded me of the work I did this past summer during my internship at the APS, which was working with archived language documents and recordings. Linguists understand that language can be “woken up” after years of not being spoken, but I think an important message from this film, was that the community was ready to revitalize and wake up. The community featured in the film now has a group of adults and children that are dedicated to bringing the spoken words of Wampanoag to their home and are able to appreciate the language in a way that they may have not been able to in the past.

Here is a clip from the film and I would encourage all to view the film!